Make Small Talk Sexy Review – Small Talk, Rio Style

Welcome to the world of “Conversation Escalation”. At least that is what the training course that is Make Small Talk Sexy, which is supposedly part of the ‘Social Training Lab’ series, purports to do – escalate small talk into the realm of the sexy and getting laid. The logo at the top of the landing page is certainly suggestive enough:

Conversation Escalation as per Make Small Talk Sexy

In this training, according to its creator, Bobby Rio (hmmmm, how that name does sound familiar…”Magnetic Messaging”, anyone?), the prevailing logic is that the art of the conversation is what can take the interaction between a guy and a girl from the simply mundane to the super-charged. Sexiness and sexy talk is what it’s all about.

Good ol’ Bobby Rio and his bunnies…

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What this training offers is a multitude of information and tips on how to make conversation and small talk sexy. Does he also mean sensual? Does it have a chance of working on a girl, let alone a woman for that matter? Does it have anything to offer a guy who wants to improve his odds with a girl (or girls)? Let’s dissect the small talk and see what this Make Small Talk Sexy review has to say.

Summary:

Conversation can make or break the early stages of a budding relationship (or even potential one night stand), and make Small Talk Sexy takes that notion and deconstructs it in its various ‘components’. Banter, flirting, overt sexual talk – it’s all covered here. The effect here is too laboured for its own good, with some of the content suffering from an odd lack of real focus at times.

This is training clearly aimed at college-age guys, albeit with less of an overly aggressive fratboy edge to it than other training by this and other dating ‘gurus’. As with all Bobby Rio dating training, there’s a helluva lot of talk and tips galore, with an avalanche of audio clips and bonus video features. Editing and better focus would have helped this product no end.

Make Small Talk Sexy doesn’t break any new ground. ‘How-to’ advice on the art of conversation, flirting and banter has been around since the dawn of dating. What is on offer is scant at times, at other times too long-winded. If it could work on a woman is highly debatable. However, it does offer advice aplenty, and, in its entirety, Make Small Talk Sexy should appeal to its targeted demographic.

The Lowdown…

Instantly, Bobby Rio (real name: Tony Almeida) tries to make a guy feel ‘special’ about having chosen to do this training by stating, “Congratulations. You’re talking a step that most men are too complacent or scared to do. You’re creating your life, instead of accepting mediocrity…”. It’s the oldest gambit in the art of shilling – make a punter feel somehow ‘chosen’ because he has done the ‘right thing’ by buying your product. Very original.

The main course comes in eight audio sessions, with the first one clocking in at 62 minutes. Yip, just over an hour of bro Rio prattling away about conversations – just for a start. No video, no animation of any kind, nada. Just him chattering away. And he does that again and again in these audio sessions.

Make Small Talk Sexy members’ page

Rio does make the pertinent point that being able to converse properly will not only be empowering in a guy’s social and sex life, but also professionally, even determining his levels of success in life. That’s all very true, and could be an eye-opener for an inexperienced college-aged guy.

The first session offers tips on being more successful with conversation. It all starts with intention. What do you intend to attain by having a conversation with her. Most guys would say sex, right? At least Rio acknowledges that, although he’s not as blatant as that. Prizes and finishing lines are what it’s all about. Some reality-checking is offered – at least that.

‘Fun, not funny’ is the title of the next, second session. This goes into ‘further depth’ about how to craft intelligent conversation that will grab her (or whoever is on the other side of the convo) and make it really work. Playful is the key word here. And then it descends into those old standbys of “inside jokes” and “secret handshakes” as being gambits to catch her interest and make her lust for you. Uh huh.

Flirting and flirtatious conversations and chitchat is what the third session is all about, although this angle did already commence in earnest in session two. He and his buddy Rob Judge do the banter thing – nothing like having two guys play-flirt with and at each other to make a point about how to flirt with girls…Trust me, some of their playacting is hilarious, if decidedly dodgy!

The ‘banter workshop’ is covered in session four, in which Rio says he’ll supply guys with a banter ‘cheat sheet’ with some stock banter lines and quips. One suggestion is to suddenly play with her hair while she’s trying to be serious, to show that “you’re immature and not being too serious”. Where does this guy come up with stuff? Actual banter (you know, of the conversational type) is very thin on the ground…

The fifth session is all about rapport and building trust and connections with her, and is offered in the form of a “blueprint”. Nothing like being an architect when trying to build a connection with a girl, I guess. Rio’s idea of rapport is to ‘feel her out’ by asking lots of questions that lead from one to the next, like some form of verbal free association of ideas. How successful this would be is anyone’s guess.

Like some type of mixology course for bartenders, the sixth session sets out to ‘bring it all together’. A touch of this and a splash of that and you have the vodka equivalent of conversation, whilst a shake of this and a stir of that gives us our small talk dry martini – you know the type of logic I’m talking about.

It’s the whole ‘A to Z’ roadmap here, with A being “escalating” and ‘Z’ being “closing the deal”. Rio defers here to a buddy of his, who he calls the World’s Best Pickup Artist (hereafter ‘WBPA’)” and the two guys have a recorded phone chat, with Rio as interviewer and WBPA as interviewee-guru. For WBPA, the biggest killers for guys are those awful “conversational pauses” – but that doesn’t need to be.

To Rio’s guru, “conversation is totally fascinating to me”. He reminds Rio, and, obviously, listeners, that most guys don’t know how to think about a conversation and are too hellbent on ‘topics’ as conversation. Rapport occurs when spontaneity and “real conversation” are allowed to run their course. They’re valid points. One just wonders why an audio of over an hour is needed to make these types of points…?

This training is clearly aimed at fratboys…ahem, I mean college-age guys, as Rio himself states how, “10 years ago I was a student myself”. That’s fine. It does try to highlight the importance of commonalities and trying to make connections in relationships, but most of the suggestions come across as hackneyed and even unfocused. Bobby Rio does have a tendency to ramble, and does so again here.

Oh, and there’s even ‘customer support’ as offered by a pretty-looking blonde called “Nataly” – I did wonder if she’s a real helper gal or just some type of eye candy avatar to give the site legitimacy. I’m not sure.

Extras

The upsells in the form of clickbait are quite evident on the landing page, with “Sexualized Flirting” for $67 and “Natural Approach” at $47 on offer. “Social Training Lab,” however, is freely on offer, with weekly sessions and tips being sent to a subscriber for nine months, or until cancelled.

Free too is a PDF entitled “Make Small Talk Sexy 2.0” that is the ebook version of all those audio sessions – and at nothing less than 212 pages – easy peasy! Why it’s “2.0” was not clear to me at all. Divided into 9 parts, one thing soon enough becomes apparent from the ebook: the content and methodology espoused by Make Small Talk Sexy is quite unfocused and Rio does love to meander around topics.

Rio ends the PDF with these poetic words of encouragement: “And, for God’s sake, go out and use this shit. Implementation is the key to the universe and the speed of implementation is the ultimate key to the universe. Everything else is just mental masturbation”. You heard the man.

Other freebies as links (under the helpful title of ‘Cool Shit’) include a quite fulsome Resources page. There’s a link to “Common Dating Questions”, with loads of questions posed, and a slew of articles and webinars as responses when said questions are clicked. “3 Texts to Turn Her On” when clicked leads one to a Magnetic Messaging video clip, which happens to be another of Rio’s dating creations. Nothing like cross-promotion.

Unfortunately, a “Teasing and Banter Cheat Sheet” leads to a dead Facebook page, which is a bit of a letdown as this ‘cheat sheet’ is highly touted by Rio in one of his audio sessions (as mentioned above). Even more egregious is a click on “8 Types of Women” leading one to this landing page, which screams clickbait in neon lights and a voice-over as laughably creepy as said landing page suggests:

“8 Types of Women”…yeah, right

As you can see, this Rio guy is a real class act.

And how does it look and feel?

It’s not especially inviting or even professional-looking. It looks like yet another amateurish blog masquerading as a business website. The logo, as shown at the opening to this review, is blatant enough, but, besides that, there is no attempt at any other visually appealing artwork or design of any kind.

There is also something disconcerting about buying a product called one thing (“Make Small Talk Sexy”) and yet landing on a page with a URL and leading banner called something entirely different (“Social Training Lab”). No one is being accused of anything, but it’s still unnerving.

Navigation around the site is easy enough, although, as previously mentioned, some of the links are either dead or really dodgy, which gives the site a more inept and witless feel than I’m sure Mr Almeida was aiming for. It never ceases to amaze me how these dating gurus spend so much time waffling on in their endless audio and video clips and so little time on coming across more professional and believable.

What’s To Like About Make Small Talk Sexy?

The guy sticks to the point. The thesis of this training is that dating, whether serious or with only sex on the mind, all boils down to the art of conversation and the way men and women talk to each other. Make Small Talk Sexy doesn’t deviate too far from this narrow intent, and does well to do that

The methodology makes sense and some of the points on offer here are intelligent enough. Rio has clearly thought this thing called ‘small talk’ out and has attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of how to make it work for a guy

There’s a lot on offer here. Being stingy with his info is not something that Rio can be accused of. The literature is immense and much work is in evidence. The same goes for (most of) the bonuses on offer.

What’s Not To Like About Make Small Talk Sexy?

Bobby Rio is desperately in need of an editor! Jeez, can this man talk and talk and talk, never mind dump reams of PDFs and articles on his clients. Wow. Just the audio sessions clock in at 7 hours 30 – that’s 450 minutes of audio! It’s just too damn much. Who has that type of time to listen to and read all that stuff? I don’t care if her name is Carla or Stacey or Pussy Galore – get this man someone to help him cut down what he says and writes – pronto!

For all the long hours of audio and enormous amounts on offer, what is presented is unfocused and too rambling for its own good. What is needed is tighter, more focused writing and speaking (again, that editor…), which will make the content and methodology more convincing.

Some of the links are unacceptably dubious and crass in the extreme. Rio may be ten years out of college, but too much of his content (and intent?) still comes across too fratboy and puerile – the aforementioned links included. Some of his token sample ‘banter’ and ‘small talk’ examples are frankly laughable, and the logic remains that of an inexperienced guy in his early 20s, not some supposedly more polished guy in his 30s. College guys may be his target audience, but surely the game can still be raised? After all, even fratboys have to eventually grow up, right?

Conclusion

Make Small Talk Sexy tells us (well, make that college-age guys) that conversation, however small and however banal, can be made more sexy and better your chance of success. The ‘success’ here is all about scoring chicks and having great sex. Sensuality or long-term relationships seem to have no importance, but it should translate into life’s other successes, right? Unfortunately, too much on offer is unconvincing.

Where Make Small Talk Sexy does succeed is in sticking to its guns and making sure that it never wanders too far from the path that is small talk, flirting and all things conversational. The approach is hardly scientific, and backed up by very little real empirical evidence (as if!), but that doesn’t do much to diminish the appeal of some of its proposed methods.

It would be churlish to completely trash this training course, weak though it mostly is. It has a winsome earnestness about it, it does offer a lot (this reviewer would say, far too much) and, most importantly, it knows to whom it is preaching. Guys of a certain age will have an affinity for what’s on offer here. It isn’t too difficult, it strives to be reasonable and it may even get a guy laid. For those guys, that will do.